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Timberwolves trade Kevin Love to Cleveland in 3-way Trade

Wolves announce trade with an ad in Star Tribune

In what we’ve seemingly known to be fact for about two weeks now has finally blossomed into reality: Kevin Love is now a Cleveland Cavalier. And in return, the Wolves will be pressing the rebuild button but hope that no one really knows that they actually pressed it.

The return is about as good as it could’ve been. The past days of a potential deal with Golden State without Klay Thompson in the mix or with Chicago for a blend of different, mostly undesirable parts are now gone. Instead the narrative turned into receiving the two past first overall choices in the draft (Anthony Bennett, 2013 and Andrew Wiggins, 2014) and a solidified and strongly underrated starting power forward in Thaddeus Young.

Over the next week or so, I’ll break down the new Pups individually to give you a better scope on what to expect. But for now, evaluating the trade as a whole is difficult because of the question marks Wiggins and Bennett carry along with them to the Great North. Just by that merit alone, this deal isn’t even close to a slam dunk. The percieved notion of it for sure is, but that’s assuming that everything goes either as or even better than expected. Wiggins would need to become a borderline superstar, while Bennett a potential All-Star down the road with Young rounding out the front court rotation in the mean time. That’s a lot to expect, which is why the head of reason dictates that the Wolves are taking an enormous step back with this deal in the short term to aim for a wider window at being more successful in the long term.

The Wolves had no choice but to trade Love eventually, which is sad in its own right. But they screwer up — I mean David Kahn/Glen Taylor screwed up. Flip Saunders is just here to patch the ship and set it off right as best he can. There’s a few more spots to fix on up but the ship ought to be setting sail in no time.